From Behind the Plate, a Dutiful Master Orchestrates the Cardinals

Baseball on television is nothing like basketball and football. In those sports, the primary camera angle shows most, if not all, of the participants. In baseball, you mostly see just two of the defensive players on every pitch.

What luck, for students of the game, that one of those positions is catcher. Hundreds of times as the Mets host St. Louis this week for four games at Citi Field, the Cardinals’ Yadier Molina will face the center-field camera from his crouch behind the plate, offering a view of the master at work.

“He looks like a shortstop behind the plate,” said the Yankees’ Brian McCann, a seven-time All-Star catcher. “He makes it look so easy, and it’s so hard. Every time I play against him, I watch him closely.”

Molina offers a course in advanced catching, a daily seminar on the nuances of the game’s most demanding position. But only he has the answer key.

“The things he does midgame, you’d have to watch him with a pretty educated eye as far as realizing when he does something that has meaning,” said Mike Matheny, the Cardinals’ manager and Molina’s predecessor as their starting catcher. “The other side won’t even know.”

Matheny was speaking in the visiting manager’s office at Miller Park last week before a game against the Brewers. In the second inning that night, starter Shelby Miller, who had walked two already, fell behind Khris Davis, 3-0. Molina called time and marched to the mound.

Molina did not break his stride. He reached for the rosin bag, tossed it back to the ground and returned to the plate.

“He didn’t say a word,” Miller said later. “I think he was just giving me a break.”

This was vintage Molina, recognizing danger before it struck. Miller threw a ball with his next pitch, but he struck out the next hitter on three pitches. Molina later told him that he was falling off to the left side in his delivery. Miller realigned his body and cruised to his first win of the season, without another walk.

“I pretty much worship the ground he walks on,” said Miller, who was 15-9 as a rookie last season. “I know for a fact that I was more of a thrower in the minor leagues. We have a lot of great catchers down there, but once you get to the big-league level, it’s weird because when you feel like you should have more pressure on you, you have less.”

Molina is the reason, Miller said, because of his impeccable pitch selection. Molina often arrives six hours before a game to prepare, but he is a master at improvisation based on clues he reads from his pitchers and opposing hitters.

“I’ve often heard guys say about Yadi, ‘Man, I feel like he’s a psychic,’ ” said Jonathan Lucroy, the Brewers’ catcher. “He knows what you’re thinking, and he does the exact opposite.”

Miller said he shook off Molina’s signs no more than five times a year. Kevin Siegrist, a Cardinals reliever who made 45 appearances last year, his rookie season, said he had never shaken off Molina. The veteran Adam Wainwright said he and Molina knew each other so well that they sometimes communicated signs by a simple look or shrug — no fingers necessary.

The factors behind Molina’s pitch selection usually, and understandably, remain a mystery. Molina, who calls every pitch on his own and often sets the defense, would gain nothing by explaining his hundreds of decisions each game. The youngest of three brothers, all major league catchers, Molina said his attention to detail came from a sense of duty.

“My family taught me about that, about being the leader, being there for your teammates and caring about everything during the game, after the game, before the game,” Molina, 31, said by his locker last week. “Just care about your teammates, care about the game, try to be good each day. That’s the way I do my part.”

When he entered the majors in 2004, Molina said, he cared so much about defense and helping the pitchers that he did not have time to concentrate properly on his offense. In 2006 — the year his Game 7 homer in the National League Championship Series devastated the Mets — he hit just .216 in the regular season. He constantly changed his stance and seemed not to trust himself as a hitter.

“Now he knows what type of hitter he is, so he’s kind of a right-field, right-center hitter,” said the Yankees’ Carlos Beltran, who played with Molina in St. Louis the last two seasons. “Now he’s not trying to hit homers, and just by not trying, now he’s hitting homers.”

Molina has hit above .300 in each of the last three seasons, with a high of 22 homers in 2012, and his average this year was .338 through Sunday.

Molina can be as cagey at the plate as he is behind it. Pat Neshek, a veteran reliever who signed with the Cardinals in February, said he had seen Molina bait opposing pitchers into thinking he would not swing — and then surprise them by smacking a hit.

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Molina calls every pitch for the Cardinals on his own, and he often sets the defense. Through Sunday, he was batting .338.CreditJeff Curry/Getty Images

Molina, who entered the majors at 21, said he fell for similar kinds of deception when he was younger, and sometimes still did.

“I’m human,” he said. “There’s going to be a case when that happens. But right now, I’m faster to get it. You play more games, you get more maturity, and you get smarter.”

Molina said the physical parts of his job were so ingrained that he did not need to think about them. On Friday, he made a rare miscue when he was not able to keep a wild pitch in front of him and his throwing error allowed a second run to score. Teammates, though, say he arrives at the Cardinals’ complex at 6 a.m. during spring training to practice blocking drills so pitchers will feel confident throwing breaking balls with a runner on third. He controls the running game with a quick transfer and a strong, accurate arm. He gets borderline strike calls mostly by keeping his glove still.

“Watch the way Yadi receives balls, how soft his hands are,” Wainwright said. “There’s nothing violent. If he catches a ball that’s below the zone, he’s never pushing it down. He’s always gently receiving it. He’s going to pull it up to the zone ever so slightly, or he’s just going to stick it. And he has those soft hands, so there’s no jerking.

“He sets up his target as wide as he can, puts the target right in the middle of his body, and he doesn’t move. A lot of catchers, you’ll see them give you the target and then drop their glove for a little bit and then pull the target back up. So if you’re a pitcher like me that follows the glove, you’re trying to hit a moving target as opposed to a very still glove, which is a lot easier to do.”

Wainwright, who jumped into Molina’s arms to celebrate the final out of the 2006 World Series, smiled and added, “Little things.”

The accumulation of little things, and a combination of talent, effort and conscientiousness, has made Molina as respected as perhaps any player in the game, referred to with the kind of reverence one might hear for Derek Jeter, or the retired Roy Halladay or Mariano Rivera.

Molina said he was proud of that reputation, even if fans did not always cheer him. Molina has not homered against the Mets since that N.L.C.S. crusher, but the sting of that hit reverberates in the booing he hears at Citi Field.

Molina does not care about that. By then, he is working, a master to witness but oblivious to anything but his job.